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Brittany Murphy: Does Her Death Count?

I want to draw my personal line at Brittany Murphy. It’s a death without worthy pathos. It does not even invite much morbid curiosity. A most minor starlet, already past her prime, dies in an utterly conventional way—methodical, long-term, self-abuse. And yet, nearly as a Christmas miracle, she’s reborn as Joan of Arc, or Michael Jackson.

The point, obviously, is that celebrity death is a really big draw. Celebrity death is bigger even than celebrity adultery, except for Tiger Woods. But were Tiger Woods to die, his death would now be bigger than his adultery.

The celebrity press, having done incredibly big numbers with big deaths, now needs more celebrities to die. And these cannot be old celebrities. Brittany Murphy may have been past her professional ingénue prime, but she’s still in her Hollywood-dying prime. The only problem, which the celebrity press is hoping can be overlooked, is that almost nobody knows who she is. Even the descriptions of her career progress are embarrassingly vague. Exactly which character in Clueless?

It’s an iffy and existential strategy for the celebrity media. Can Brittany Murphy achieve in death the fascination that she failed mightily to attract in her working life?